30 July, Une maison renfoncée

"You are alright, monsieur?" Paol asked, blushing fiercely at his apparent inability to keep Bright from causing mischief. Not that he could really blame him. Not after that.

Gingerly he let his left arm go slack, but still kept a hold on Bright's shoulder with his right.

"Yes, thank you." Todd set the blood-stained linen pad aside and reached quickly for a clean one. "I hope to avoid needing to sew you up, Michel, but you have taken quite a bad slash. It may need closing up so it will heal properly."

Michael grunted, his body still rigid and shaking. "Rather take another, 'stead of being used for a pincushion," he quipped, given in slightly unsteady French. "This'll learn me. Fightin' ain't a healthy business, is it?" Something like a chuckle rasped from his throat. "Shoulda kept well out of it, dunno what I was thinkin'!"

"You'll be well out of it for a while now, anyway," he said and half grimaced; the sentiment had made rather more sense in his head.

"Good!" was Michael's firm rejoinder. "Better off leavin' that rubbish to you lot. The Line ain't the place for me anyway."

This remark was as baffling as it was unsettling. Todd's eyebrows drew together in a puzzled frown and he glanced curiously at Paol. Then he shrugged and pushed his curiosity aside. There was medical work to be done.

"Indeed you will. Keep still now, I am going to dress the wound. Sewing it up will answer no purpose." It would also keep Todd away from other, perhaps more deserving, patients. Best to avoid it if he could, and in his opinion, stitches were too likely to take infection.

"You may rest your arm, Paol," Todd added, seemingly as an afterthought.

A worried frown creased Paol's brow. What was Bright on about? He'd never seen him like this. Though, come to think, he couldn't recall ever having seen him wounded at all. For all that was worth; it wasn't as though either of them were thinking clearly at the moment.

He let his arm drop to his side and sank back a bit, focusing as best he could on the task at hand.

Concentrate on holding the dressing in place while he wrapped the bandage around Michael's chest. Keep himself from wondering at the man's strange comments. This was a losing battle, however. Todd could not help it. This was a case he had never before encountered and it intrigued him greatly.

"Are you not a soldier?" He asked Michael as he passed the long piece of linen one more turn around the fellow's chest.

The question was answered first with a scoff. "Don't be stupid, I'm wearin' the bloody uniform, ain't I?" Then Michael shook his head, uttering a low hiss and trying to pull away. "Christ, woulda been better off leavin' it bleedin'! It wasn't that bad. Least it wasn't me hands. Need those, I do!"

Paol could only watch with a growing sense of unease. There was nothing particularly damning in Bright's words -- these ones at least -- but he couldn't shake the feeling that the conversation was heading in a bad direction and he had no idea how to stop it. Short of clobbering Bright over the head, an alternative which neither Bright nor, he imagined, Monsieur Jacques would appreciate.

His hands? "Let me see them. Your hands, that is," Todd directed, once he'd tied the bandage end into place. There was a pause, a clear show of sudden hesitation before Michael lifted his hands up for the surgeon's inspection.

At first glance, they were what would be expected for an infantryman. Callouses on the right thumb and forefinger, with powder burns where they should be. Todd frowned. Those marks were typical but the overall lack of hardened skin stood sharply at odds with them.

"How long as Michel been in your company?" He asked of Paol, a trifle abruptly.

Paol was silent for a moment, then shrugged one shoulder. "A while."

A while, said Paol. Since January, said Alain. This was threatening to move beyond Todd's realm, but he forged on anyway. "And he has been in the Line, properly?" He checked himself. That had not been a well-phrased question. "He has done regular duties, alongside the rest of the company?"

"Don't be stupid," Michael interjected. "Course I have. The hell d'you think I am, anyway?"

Again Paol hesitated. What was the man getting at? What was wrong with regular duties? "Aye," he agreed somewhat uncertainly, " 's like he says."

Hm. He let Michael's hands go, the seed of suspicion swiftly growing into a flower.

"Let me see your hands, then," Todd said, his attention now on Paol. "Or, better, have a look at Michel's for yourself. Regular duties for a private soldier are not light or easy, and leave their marks, particularly upon the hands. In this case, however..."

Paol made no move to look at Bright's hands, instead he was staring at Jacques, confusion and not a little fear in his face. "What's it matter what his hands look like?"

"Aye," Michael echoed. "They ain't hurt or anythin', so it don't matter. I just needed 'em not to be hurt."

Todd ignored him. "An ordinary soldier's hands will be rough and calloused, from work, primarily. Michel's hands... are not."

So Bright wasn't -- hadn't been an ordinary soldier? Or maybe he'd just been lazy as all hell. But why was that important? Particularly to this man? "What's wrong with that?" he repeated stupidly.

"Not a bleedin' thing, that's what," Michael answered curtly, favouring Todd with a glare. "Christ, it's like bein' put before the Royal Academy all over - "

"You in there!" An authoritative English voice boomed out from the barn's entrance. "Surgeon! Have you gotten lost? You are taking long enough!"

Todd muttered an oath. "Never mind it, for now. Here. Let us see your arm, Paol. And you, Michel, will be quiet, or I shall remove your tongue!"

"Wh--huh? 'm fine," he replied automatically, faintly bewildered as to how the conversation had come round to him.

"Your arm, m'sieur. The left one." Todd was prepared to brook no refusals.

"It's nothin'. It's fine," he repeated. That the surgeon might actually be able to prevent him from getting worse did not occur to him. All his mind seemed to grasp was that to accept the man's help was to admit that he was not alright, and he had to be alright. He couldn't need a surgeon if he was alright. And he was fine.

"Charcot-- you should look at him. He can't see and..." he trailed off helplessly. In truth he hadn't the will to argue, particularly with someone who was simply trying to help.

Burke hurried over to where the surgeon was tending to the French prisoners, and frowned at the number of them who seemed severely wounded. Their orders had just been to move them. It should have been simple enough.

"Any 'elp fer ye, sir?" he asked Todd in an undertone. "That major's on th' warpath, so 'e is."

And learning of a missing prisoner had not bettered the man's mood. Burke had been roundly cursed for the supposed incompetence of riflemen, and his pride still smarted from his inability to argue back with an officer.

'Fine' was clearly a relative term. Todd lifted an eyebrow and decided he would have to be mildly unpleasant. It was an unfortunate consequence of his profession.

"Sit down, m'sieur," he said firmly, but got no further. The English rifleman had re-appeared, sounding harassed. Which was little surprise since that Guardsman was involved. "He knows how to pick his moments, doesn't he? No, never mind. You may help me with this fellow."

His face flushed a second later when he realised he had given the latter instructions in French. What a silly error to make! Todd picked up the little knife he had recently used to cut away Michael's shirt and repeated his directions, this time in English.

"Also," he added with a nod at Michael, "I am giving this man some laudanum, which will shortly take effect. He is likely to babble on in the most nonsensical way so pay him no mind."

Burke nodded. No doubt laudanum made a man feel terribly odd. He crouched down next to where Todd and Paol were on the ground.

"What d'ye need me t' do?"

"Fetch out a pad of linen from that bag," Todd directed, in English. His attention was momentarily focussed on cutting away the rough bandage that had been tied around Paol's arm. "There is a vial in there as well, which I shall need."

The vial contained laudanum. He intended to dose Michael well enough to lessen his pain, but not so well the man fell asleep.

Paol stiffened as the surgeon set to work, curling away from the wall just enough that his right shoulder took all his weight. Where was his coat? he wondered dully. He didn't remember taking it off, but he must—Hell. The raw, angry pain in his arm sharpened suddenly and he bit back a cry.

A linen pad was easy enough to find. The vial was less so, but he found it after a minute of searching.

"'Ere ye are," he said, offering them to the surgeon. He eyed the Frenchmen with sympathy as the man made a choked-off sound of pain. He'd been wounded in the arm a month previously, and knew how badly it hurt.

"Easy, lad," he said awkwardly. "'E'll fix ye up right well." Not French, but he felt the need to say something.